Archive for April 2013

Shake with ice and strain into sugar rimmed cocktail glass.
Light one ounce of Cointreau on fire and pour into glass.
Toast stick of cinnamon and stir resulting drink with stick.

Fire! Fire good! Here we have rum from a Daiquiri, bitters from a Manhattan and lemon juice and sugared rim from a Sidecar. The Cointreau comes from a Margarita, and seeing it lit aflame is a cool effect but honestly does nothing for the drink. The toasted cinnamon stick, on the other hand, really helps the nose of the final drink.

Omit the cinnamon stick and you just have a Schwanzstucker, so use the cinnamon stick. Woof.

This was the first cocktail that I not only imagined, but made for my Young Frankenstein collection. I bought my new favorite toy, The Smoking Gun, after seeing it employed for a number of drinks during my trip to Sydney. Basically, you put wood chips in it, light the chips, and smoke is produced out of a long rubber tube, which can be used to infuse in food or cocktails.

For this drink I used Cognac from a Sidecar, part of the sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica) from a Negroni and orange bitters from a Martini. While that is mixed and stirred, I turn a coupe over on the counter and fill it with cherry wood smoke. When the drink is ready, the coupe is flipped, releasing the smoke. The drink is poured in and a cherry from a Manhattan is dropped in. You get nice hints of smoke without it being overwhelming, which I think plays nicely with the Cognac.

Of course, the kitchen smokes up something fierce during this process and lasts for an hour or two. Small price to pay.

Gin from a Martini, simple syrup and a bit of lime juice from a Daiquiri and additional lime juice from a Margarita. The Abby Normal here is the vinegar, though it’s not so abnormal for me as I have a whole bunch of these unique flavorings that I’ve collected in the past year. This one I picked up in Mystic, CT, from Extra Virgin Oil. It definitely gives the drink some pucker with the lime that the salted rim (from a Margarita as well) helps to balance.

In the movie Young Frankenstein, “sedagive” is the ludicrous guess made at the being-strangled doctor’s charades attempt. Although this scene and line appears in the musical, the final ludicrous guess made is “Flying Down to Rio.” I don’t know. This is one of the many little changes made from the film that I question. But perhaps to accommodate you can throw an umbrella in the drink for a little Brazilian flair. Pra caramba!

Here’s a light and unique sipper using the gin from a Negroni, the Cointreau from a Sidecar and part of the lime juice from a Daiquiri. The Abby Normal ingredient here is obviously the Ponzu, a soy sauce with a hint of citrus. It provides a wonderful saltiness to the drink that I love.

In Young Frankenstein there is a line about choosing a giant corpse to simplify working with all the parts. I think in this drink’s case pilfering a much larger Negroni and Margarita would help. Doubling the size might be a little much, but using 1.5 oz. gin and Cointreau would make sense to me, perhaps keeping the lime juice and Ponzu at the above measurements.

It just occurred to me a garnish of a Ritz cracker might be appropriate…

Ooo, this was a tough one. It was actually the last cocktail I made from the ingredients I had leftover from the other Young Frankenstein drinks, with tequila from a Margarita, part of the sweet vermouth from a Manhattan, and a lemon twist and dry vermouth from a Martini. My initial thought was to use Sriracha or a cayenne hot sauce I had as my Abby Normal ingredient. Neither worked well. I spent a bit of time lingering on one variation that used a sweet Thai chili sauce, but eventually nixed it. I then purchased another hot sauce with a sweeter angle (honey habanero) and even tried a spicy wing sauce. In all cases, I was losing the tequila and even if the drink had an initial welcoming though unusual taste it quickly wore out that welcome.

I was about to throw up my hands and start rearranging some of my other drinks to allow for a different combination when it occurred to me to try my little bottle of liquid smoke which I acquired probably two years ago and had never utilized. Just a couple of drops is all you need to impart the hickory smoke flavor (it’s concentrated). I tasted it before stirring and really enjoyed it, so proceeded with a stir with ice and… then I didn’t like it. I lost the tequila again and actually felt the dry vermouth was dominant, though there was less of that than the sweet vermouth or tequila. The dilution of water just really brought it to the forefront.

So I tried it again, stirring without ice. Perfect. There wolves, there castle.

Shake with ice and double strain into coupe.
Garnish with orange twist.

For the first of my Young Frankenstein cocktails I took rye from a Manhattan, Campari and an orange twist from a Negroni and part of the lime juice from a Margarita, and then combined that with my Abby Normal ingredient of sour cherry jam. Using jam and preserves is somewhat trendy (or maybe just passed the trend — truth be told, I’m not that trendy), but it isn’t something that I’ve really tried. That’s a shame since there are some great artisanal jams out there which can provide some interesting sweeteners for drinks.

For me I chose sour cherry so that the resulting drink wouldn’t be too sweet and would stay more on the tart side, which this drink certainly does, especially with all that lime juice. The sour cherries give it a nice hint of sweetness, but tart and bitter (from all that Campari) win out here. For rye, I went with the bonded Rittenhouse which holds its own against the strength of the other ingredients.

The orange twist is the hump. Feel free to put it on the right or left side. On in the middle.

Right on the heels of Parade I will be performing in the musical adaptation of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (that’s FronkenSTEEN!), appearing as the good doctor himself. Whereas for some of the other shows I have struggled a bit to come up with themes for drinks (see the aforementioned Parade) with Young Frankenstein I hit on my theme almost immediately — an electric jolt of creativity, if you will.

I had recently visited Sydney on business and enjoyed a number of the bars I found in the city. At a couple of establishments they employed smoke and fire and other additional elements for drinks that I had yet to experiment with at home. I wanted to play a bit of a mad scientist with my drinks for Young Frankenstein, as would be fitting, and was inspired by what I saw and tasted.

Upon returning home I immediately ordered my Smoking Gun and a chef’s torch and played. I wanted to go all molecular gastronomy on some cocktails, but liquid nitrogen scared me (cost aside, reading stories about stomach linings destroyed will do that to you) and turning drinks into gelatins or foams didn’t really appeal. That was OK, though, because I could still incorporate some less-than-common elements into some drinks and follow my theme through.

And that theme? It was more of a challenge or puzzle for me that required a lot of trial and error and experimentation, which I thought was perfect. I wanted to take six classic cocktails, then break apart all of their ingredients and rearrange and reassemble them, injecting each one with something a little “Abby Normal” (fire, smoke, etc.). Over the course of the next two weeks I will present the results one by one, but first I would introduce the control group in the experiment: